Brighton had the displeasure of being invaded by The Apprentice’s candidates in last night’s episode.

A big bunch of hopeless but cocky contestants descended on our great city from the capital with their fancy suits and dodgy maths.

Our viewing terror started with seeing the candidates being woken at 5 am to meet Lord Sugar and the trademark shots of unsightly morning faces, bed hair and frightful torsos. Upstart JD O’Brien says, “For some reason my brain is not working,” - well pity it didn’t start working for the remainder of the day.

Lord Sugar greets them in a London Theatre with an obituary to Willy Wonka and his talents as a business man. “He was creative, he was a risk taker and more importantly he understood what his customers wanted.” You don’t actually believe he was a real person, do you, Alan? The task is to design,manufacture and sell sweets to flog to local businesses and hound Brightonians into parting with their cash. Haven’t we seen this type of task before? Couldn’t the producers come up with a more contemporary idea? Like selling their own range of clown costumes, something that would really get people flocking in their droves to get their hands on them.

But it’s not until the teams start delegating roles that we really see the quality of the candidates. Project manager of team Nebula, Oliver Nohl-Oser, the stuttering love-child of David Cameron and George Osborne, can’t remember the city he is selling to. While Titans are graced with the confident Sofiane Khelfa, whose only reason for working on the sales team is because he is “not comfortable in the kitchen because I have a wife who cooks for me”.

Eventually Oliver’s team goes for the ice cream-flavoured rock and salt and vinegar fudge? Salt and vinegar fudge? Did I hear it correctly. Like a fortune teller, Oliver says, “I’m getting quite a salty aftertaste in my mouth which isn’t pleasant,”. He’ll soon pay the price for listening to his clueless team, who seem to think Brightonians will be in love with salty fudge. More like throwing it away to the Seagulls.

Meanwhile the other team are pitching their football-shaped sweets to Brighton and Hove Albion. Cocky Sofiane is their choice to close the deal with chief executive Paul Barber. And to make things worse the Seagulls are fleeced when the production team mess up and deliver substandard sweets. Sofiane, with a PhD in talking trash to disguise the mess up, says, ”We’ve went the extra mile to do that for you. It’s a bit quirky, it’s fun.” And just like the Albion we can see through them, though they somehow managed to make a few quid, turn a profit and win in the boardroom.

And what about our Cameron Osborne lovechild? Oliver was left with a sour taste in his mouth after a dressing down by Sir Alan. “Your best hope for £250,000 is to buy yourself a scratch card,” and with another one of Lord Sugar’s endless putdowns Oliver was fired and confined to the Apprentice scrapheap of failure.

Will I be watching next week? Not a chance.